Restored ji-ari 1.7 in D#
This ji-ari shakuhachi made in a thick and dense Japanese madake had a big crack on the upper part oddly repaired with metal clips which wasn’t efficient as the crack was reported on the side of the clips. My first idea was to remove them and inlay bindings instead but after cleaning and polishing, I found out that the clips were made of golden brass and decided to keep them visible. So I bound in between those clips and secured the crack.
This shakuhachi was quite out of tune; pitched in between D and D#. I retuned it to D# as the bamboo was to short to lower the pitch. I had to enlarge the tone-holes which gave more volume and better response.
The bore was painted in red with a bad chemical painting which I removed completely and re-lacquered with black urushi.
The sound is clear and precise with a nice plain and stable ro. The quite thin bore gives very clear and bright high harmonics but the lower register is little bit shallow in my opinion. It’s a good, easy blown and affordable intermediate level ji-ari shakuhachi.
Lenght : 510mm
Diameter at utaguchi : int : 20 ext: 41mm
Diameter at root end : int : 18 ext : 56mm
Hole diameter : 11/12mm
Black urushi lacquer – kinko horn inlay – 2 pieces (nakatsugi-kan) – 6 nodes
